Friday, November 21, 2014

Lawhill

To 'E' or not to 'E'? That is the question. So let us provide you the answer... maybe. What the hell are we talking about, you ask? Well, maybe you have noticed that some of your bottles of whiskey are spelled with an 'e' in them, while in others, it is omitted. What's the deal? Today, arguably whiskey is famed in four locations in the world - Scotland, Canada, Ireland, and the United States. Traditionally, Scotland and Canada spelled it without the 'e.' In the late 1800s, Scotch was not the same product you know today - it was poorly distilled and allegedly near undrinkable. Irish exporters to the U.S. didn't want their good whiskeys to be mistaken for swill, so they added an 'e' to distinguish their product from the Scots. The U.S. followed suit at home and added 'e's to their homegrown whiskey.

Now, we have recently come to the end of another of our favorite series on HBO - Boardwalk
Empire. In the opening of each episode, Steve Buscemi's character, the corrupt Nucky Thompson wanders off the boardwalk onto the beach amid scores of Canadian whisky bottles, labels prominent, washing up on the shore. Only thing is that the lables have 'e's! Someone call IMDb for the goof page! Well... maybe. Thing is, all kinds of whiskeys don't follow the general rules. Most prominent among them is George Dickel's Tennessee whisky without the 'e' and Old Forester and Maker's Mark bourbons without the 'e'. Maybe Nucky Thompson's whiskey is a Canadian exception or maybe, since the Thompson family is proudly Irish, they are bringing in Canadian whisky with the 'e' added labels in order to sell swill as premium product during prohibition. I like the second explanation. Either way, we will offer you a good-bye cocktail of Nucky Thompson's era, the Lawhill Cocktail.